The Wounded Healer
by Ennui Enigma
Summary: John is a physician. He is used to mending broken bones but can he mend a broken heart? Written as an addendum to Synesthesia but can stand-alone.


_Sherlock is alone in a world that's turned its back on him leaving him cold with darkness upon his door. John is ready to fall apart with monsters in his head, hopes and dreams gone, unable to face another day. Can two wounded hearts ever risk love again?_

Comments, reviews, critique, and future prompts all appreciated and treasured!

~o~

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**The Wounded Healer**

Is there any human being that is spared the cruel wounds that pierce the soul at least once during our frail and feeble existence? In the secret depths of the heart buried beneath layers of superficial spackling consisting of work, drugs, alcohol, false smiles, pride, degrees, intellectualization, or logic, lies a vulnerable, soft, heart full of feeling and emotion and easily damaged and scarred. Wounded. Left to hemorrhage a lonely painful death by insensitive, ignorant and brutal acquaintances. Its life force ebbs with each sorrowful heartthrob, vitality relinquishing its grip, and death entering at last.

People have sometimes questioned the wisdom of investing myself in a friendship with Sherlock Holmes. He is a man with a reputation for being a cold, calculating thinking machine perfect at solving riddles and logic puzzles, unable to show or appreciate the sweeter, softer emotional moments of life.

I'd been warned early enough that Sherlock would only smash my offer of camaraderie to bits leaving behind shards of shattered expectations. It was not ignorance or blind infatuation that prompted me to devote my heart and mind to the relationship. I was prepared to pour out my soul upon the altar of friendship and grow it into a deep and abiding living entity. I recognized that I risked utter rejection or worse, cold indifference. I fully understood that dismissal by Sherlock would be as sharp and painful as any actual iron spike jabbed through my chest. It would leave me bleeding and conceivably mortally wounded. I could not deny that this scenario was entirely probable, even likely, given his taciturn and antisocial behavior.

In spite of this, inexplicably, I felt a bond, a connection, from our very first introduction. A thrill, like an electric current, coursed through my body from head to toe when I met Sherlock. I stood dumbfounded as he babbled on about violin playing, a new flat on Baker Street, and my tan lines from Afghanistan. I remember the sensations and the emotions clearly. The smell of the laboratory at Bart's will forever trigger such thoughts anew.

I sensed that Sherlock equally felt the kindred connection. The signals were so subtle, so brief, and so faint, that I could not elaborate upon them and prove them as my colleague now demonstrates during his elaborate deductions. Maybe it was the brief eye contact, the blink of an eyelash, or the twitch of the lips that told me. Whatever the cues, I simply knew. Unlike dirty fingernails or calluses on the hands, the clues of heart communication are invisible.

Some call it intuition. I believe it is deeper than a mere hunch. How else can I explain the instant recognition of compatibility? Both of us wounded in action. Both left to die but somehow surviving. Both with scars that never healed leaving behind a dull ache that rose to consciousness during particularly tough times.

My so-called friends were correct about one aspect though. I didn't need fresh wounds to add to my recently crushed spirit. Not that long ago my heart was shredded so severely that I thought I was incapable of loving again with the depth as I had loved her. The pain was so sharp and agonizing that I swore I would never jeopardize my heart by opening it up to another human. Humans were imperfect. Humans made mistakes. Humans could do incredibly hurtful things to each other. Humans, in the end, failed you.

Her name was Charity. She was my girl. She was beautiful on the inside and outside. She was precious and belonged to me. Her golden hair, sweet lips, and wonderful iridescent green eyes were mine. Her laughter trailed after her in silver ribbons and her smile lit up the room. No matter how tired or downcast I might be, she always managed to cajole me out of my shell of despair into the glorious sunshine of joy in which she constantly dwelt. She was my angel. She was the reason for my existence. Every good thing that happened I could trace back to Charity.

We promised to wait for each other when I went off to Afghanistan. My last memory is of her standing on the train platform, waving her arms goodbye, glowing in her yellow outfit, a brave smile upon her lips while tears streamed down her face. Even now, when I think of her, unbidden tears well up in my eyes.

I never saw her again. Never kissed her sweet, lush lips. Never heard her soft, musical voice whisper, 'I love you'. She was murdered. Viciously shot during a jewel heist gone awry. The coroner said she didn't suffer. It was little consolation to me.

From the moment I received word of her death, I lost all desire to live. I cared not whether I saw the next day or not. My mind was numb. I could feel neither joy nor sadness. Just nothingness. No amount of ribbing and jokes from my well-meaning comrades could lighten the atmosphere of gloom that enshrouded me in an infernal storm clouding every thought. I signed up for the most dangerous and daring military missions. I didn't care if I was killed. Living or dying was the same to me.

Eventually I was shot like my dearly departed Charity but unlike her, I was only wounded. It was enough to end my military career but not my life. I recovered my physical health and was discharged at last from the hospital. My heart was still in pieces, broken and wounded though. It felt cold. I locked it inside an imaginary chest of false smiles, alcohol, and gambling. I couldn't bear to return to my former haunts where everything reminded me of her. Instead I migrated to the great city of London a cesspool of kindred, injured souls searching desperately for meaning and solace.

It was in this pitiable state that I stumbled upon Sherlock and recognized a soul mate that also suffered a deep abiding heartache. A tiny portion of my mind clicked. A spark ignited within my soul. A slim glimmer of hope flickered. Maybe this equally wounded veteran could understand the depths of pain that afflicted me day and night. Even my dreams haunted me with sinister scenarios that woke me drenched in sweat and heart pounding fear.

So began my friendship with the most remarkable man I've ever met. At first, I thought I'd misjudged his character. I thought I was in for tragedy. Sherlock had a psyche that manufactured a tough intellectual amour around his frail wounded heart. It was impenetrable. I could never hope to crack such ironclad sarcastic walls. Only through patient, unconditional acceptance, would I one day procure the key to his heart's armour.

I risked my own vulnerability by loving him without requirement. I placed no conditions on our friendship. His wild, untamable spirit was free to roam and wander as it pleased. I made no judgment on his choices. When he spiraled down into a black prostration of depression and circled dangerously close to its brink, I was there to break the fall. I gave him a listening ear or a simple warm presence. I took the plunge with him when he crashed, picked him up, and carried him on wings of comfort away from the malicious gossip and taunts of the world. A world that did not understand nor even try to comprehend the inner workings of his magnificent eccentric mind. It was a world that entertained itself by shooting arrows at his heart forcing him to raise a shield of indifference and cold logic in self-preservation.

Gradually I came to see that the wounds in his heart were numerous and long standing. Since a young child, he'd been an easy target for the cruelties of schoolchildren. He was mercilessly teased when his rapidly growing, gangly limbs refused to cooperate making him useless in school sports. His naturally shy nature and disinclination to articulate his thoughts as freely as his peers left him labeled as autistic, antisocial, and learning disabled. When his older brother, seven years his senior, left for the university it was a painful arrow straight to his heart. He felt abandoned and betrayed even though he cognitively knew it was necessary and couldn't be helped. Now he had to face the bullies alone. He trembled at the thought.

The situation did not improve in adolescence. He was easily embarrassed around those of the opposite sex. His awkward attempts at conversation merely elicited ridicule from them. They snubbed their noses and looked the other direction when he walked down the hall.

The hardest blow came with the death of his father. Sherlock had always admired his father. Although Father was home very little due to his business travels he made up for it when he was around. He always had time for his youngest son. The two shared a common love of logic puzzles and chemistry. They laughed at the idiot bullies at school and the stupid stuck up girls. No matter how horrible his day had been chatting with his father always made Sherlock feel better. His father's passing dealt a deathblow that crushed his young heart. It left a gaping black hole that refused to be filled with drugs, studies, or work. It was then that he swore never to love again. He would never risk such heartbreak. The pain was unbearable. He cried for five days straight then stopped. He never shed another tear nor mentioned his father again. He closed down his heart and hung out a sign that read, 'do not enter'.

Now when Anderson looked at him with distain and accused him of being a psychopath, the insults only created another layer of cool indifference. When Sally called him a freak, he just retreated deeper into his shell of machine-like logic. He didn't try to express his feelings anymore. No one cared. Why bother? He found his violin to be an outlet for anything akin to emotions. The music that he caressed from the strings expressed more than words ever could. Coaxing a melodious harmony or plucking out a cacophony of jarring notes spoke volumes if anyone cared to listen.

Of course I did not learn all this overnight. We were like two wounded soldiers scarred from the battlefield of life tentatively opening up as a flower bud unfurl its petals to the hopeful rays of the sun. Slowly. In spurts and lulls. The wounds ran deep. They refused to disappear completely.

I suffered a series of setbacks. My nightmares worsened for a while. Fear seeped into every fiber of my being and I relived the trauma of my army days. "Breath, John. One breath at a time," he'd whisper during particularly devastating nightmares. Sherlock reminded me that the hideous monsters tormenting my mind would pass. Sherlock didn't accept the psychiatrist's diagnoses of psychosomatic limp or posttraumatic stress disorder. He did not let the labels bias his opinion of my abilities as marksman and comrade amidst danger. His perceptive spirit penetrated the shadows of my fears and pulled out the admirable qualities. He invited. "Come…could be dangerous."

For my own part, I gave him the freedom and acceptance that his unconventional spirit required. I supported him when others called his ideas crazy. I ignored the words like 'unfeeling sociopath', 'arrogant bastard' and 'freak'. Instead I saw the insecure, sensitive, misunderstood, frail genius. I offered sincere praise at his brilliant deductions where others had told him to 'piss off'. I was his anchor, a calming presence that balanced his propensity for bouts of extreme excitement and bursts of frantic energy. I reminded him that there was a life outside of criminal investigations. When an investigation was not going well and he'd get spiteful and morose, I'd repeat as he'd reminded me, "Breath, Sherlock, just breath!"

We were two lonely, wounded souls in search of unreserved, accepting companionship. We found it in each other. With time, a healing trust flourished between us. The wounds of the heart left scars that would never disappear. Through our friendship they faded. The façades, the masks, the layers of protection build up as a fortress around broken hearts began to come down.

Not that our healing was always smooth. Sherlock was prone to boredom. "Bang, – ominous pause – bang, bang." The wall in our flat was decorated with evidence of his target practice. "Bored, bored, bored!" He'd whined more than once. I came to see that these complaints of boredom actually disguised a deeper longing. But his pleas for love were so cleverly hidden that others missed them. Mycroft had been correct in one of his first meetings with me. "How many friends do you think he has?" Unable to penetrate his armour, Sherlock had been rejected again and again. Was it any wonder that when I met him he didn't consider anyone a friend; only enemies and archenemies?

Perhaps we were both a little shocked at the standoff against Moriarty when at the pool the two of us recognized how deeply we'd grown to value the other. It was disconcerting at first to realize our vulnerability. But neither of us would ever choose to return to our locked soul-cages of safety. Life was not worth living without risking the heart. Together we opted to brave the arrows of the world.

~o~

We are two wounded souls healing each other. Some find my friend SHERlocked; but I know he will never be locked to me because now I hold the key to his heart. It may be locked against others but not to me. Never locked for John. Never JOHNlocked.

~o~

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_A/N: Written with inspiration from the song 'Crash and Burn' (by Savage Garden) and general life experiences. Dedicated to my own soul mate. Without him I would not be writing. He was there to pick me up when I crashed. I could never have flown again without his unconditional love. It's not everyday that someone such as this comes into your life. When it happens, treasure it; hold on to it; and don't lose hope._


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